


Must I write?

by o0Anapher0o



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Introspection, Philosophy, Post-Episode: s04e21 The Muse, Self-Doubt, Writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-03
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2021-03-03 18:42:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24520255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/o0Anapher0o/pseuds/o0Anapher0o
Summary: After the events of ‘The Muse’ Jake struggles with what being a writer means to him.
Relationships: Benjamin Sisko & Jake Sisko
Comments: 9
Kudos: 3





	Must I write?

**Author's Note:**

> I always thought that the portrayal of Jake as a writer was very different from any of my personal experiences with writing, especially in this episode and I wanted to explore that a little.

“Explore the reason that makes you write; test if its roots reach the deepest place in your heart; admit to yourself if you would die if you were forbidden to write. This more than anything: ask yourself in the quietest hour of your night: must I write? Dig within yourself for a deep answer. And if it should be a confirmative one, if you can meet this serious question with a strong and simple ‘I must’, then build your life according to this necessity.”  
Jake turned the words over and over in his mind. It was a big question, one, he knew, posed at a time just before an era in which writing could in fact be a reason to be persecuted and maybe even killed. And that wasn’t even the point.  
Maybe surprisingly for someone his age Jake Sisko was very much aware of his own mortality. Ever since the death of his mother, through countless terrors on Spaceships and stations he was very much aware that he and everybody around him could die. And not in a general, one-day-we’ll-all-be-dead kind of way, but in a I-could-die-tomorrow kind of way. That was not the issue. He knew, since the events with Onaya without a doubt, that he was ready to die for his art. But this century old poet asked him something else entirely: If he was ready to life for it. And he simply didn’t know the answer.

Jake had wanted to be a writer ever since he had been able to tell stories, before he had even been able to actually write. Of course he hadn’t known then that that was what he wanted to be. Making up stories, creating characters in his head had been a simple way to have fun, to get around the prosaicness of everyday life and to help him feel less lonely when his father had yet again been send on a new post, forcing him to leave his friends behind. He had only become aware of how much this was something he wanted to do, when he realised how little he wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps. His father had always expected him to join Starfleet and never hidden the fact. It had never been a demand, a fully expressed wish of his father’s, only an assumption repeated often enough to make it feel like there was no other way. By now Jake realised he had never meant to pressure him, only that Ben Sisko didn’t imagine his son could want anything else, because for him Starfleet was all he had ever dreamed of. As always he had meant well, but at the time it had made Jake want to scream more often than not.  
And now here he was mulling over a four hundred year old letter not certain if he had made the right choice.  
Ever since Onaya Jake had done a lot of soul searching. He blamed it on the unfinished novel, sitting on his desk, laughing at him. It was good, there was no doubt about it, but despite what his father said, Jake had never written anything he had felt so disconnected from. He knew the events, the characters, even the sentences as well as his own thoughts, but still reading them felt like reading someone else’s work. Now that the strange alien was no longer stimulating his brain his thoughts were once again scattered and foggy, story arches no more than vague outlines, dialogue fragmented, sentences that fled from him before he had even finished them.  
He worked on other stories in the meantime. He had even written one about Onaya, the one he had mentally started when he had first seen her. It was good, somewhat fairytale like and different from anything he had written before, but it was good in its own right. Nothing like the novel though, the pile of paper sitting on his desk, mocking him.  
So he had turned to those who had come before him. He had read all he could find of other writers writing on writing. Essays, autobiographies, interviews. Some had been helpful, some trite and some had given him something to think about.  
Must I write?  
He had heard about torture devices the Cardassians used, implants that could cause unbearable pain, or even kill you. A few years back rumours had been going around the station that Garak the tailor had been implanted with such a device by the Obsidian Order. Jake tried to imagine it, having such an implant and being told to never write down a word ever again lest it be activated to cause him unspeakable agony. Would he rather kill himself than life like that? Or would he rather endure the pain if it meant he could still write?  
Of course unless the one controlling the implant was a telepath there was no way that could truly stop him from writing. As another 20th century writer had once snidely remarked there was a difference between writing and typing and as petty the quote was in context, there was truth to it; the act of writing something was not the same as the act of writing it down. So that didn’t help either.

Behind him the door swished open and the familiar voice of his father filled their quarters: “Jake-o, I’m home.”  
Ben noticed his son lying on the couch the moment he entered. After the events of the last few days the sight instantly made worry curl in his gut, but he made sure not to show any of it. Jake was doing fine Dr Bashir had assured him repeatedly. A week ago the sight of him lying on the sofa would not have concerned him, so it wouldn’t do to let anything change that.  
“How are you doing, son?” he asked cheerfully.  
The inarticulate noise he got as reply was worthy of one of Odo’s snarls.  
Ben made his way over and pushed his son’s legs aside to take a seat next to him on the couch. In the meantime he observed him carefully. He looked alright. His face was no longer pale; he didn’t look tired or sick. Only his furrowed brows and the brooding expression hinted at an issue.  
“You okay, Jake?” Ben asked carefully and for the first time in his life found himself wishing the answer would amount to girl-trouble.  
Jake nodded absently. “Yeah. Just thinking.” he muttered.  
“About what?”  
Without a word Ben was handed the PADD Jake had been clutching. It was open on a text, none of Jake’s, he could immediately tell. No, this was a book, a letter by all appearances. He scanned the text.  
“’It is enough to feel that you could live without writing that you should not be allowed to’,” he quoted, “Jeez, Jake, that’s heavy stuff.”  
“It is.” his son confirmed, “And the bad part is that I don’t know the answer. Must I write? I can’t come up with a single scenario that would actually test my determination, even theoretically.” And with that it all spilled out of him, his doubts, his thoughts, his contemplations, how he couldn’t finish the novel, how he couldn’t know if this was the one thing he wanted more than anything. Ben made a bit of a face when he mentioned the Cardassian torture device, but he kept quiet and listened to everything his son had to say until there was nothing left to say.  
“I see.” he said after he had taken a moment to digest everything Jake had told him. “I didn’t know you had such doubts. I thought you loved writing.” he ventured.  
“And I do. But with everything that’s happened I can’t help thinking if this is who I am or only who I imagine I would like to be. I told Onaya I wanted to be immortal through my writing. But that’s not what it should be about. Rilke is right: if you truly are an artist you have to take on that fate, with no demand for any outward reward. You should do it because you’re compelled to do it.”  
Jake spoke with increased excitement. Clearly the words had gotten to him.  
“And who is this Rilke that makes him such an expert?” Ben asked a little doubtful.  
Jake rolled his eyes. “He was a poet from earth from the late 19th century. German.”  
Ben nodded filing that information. “Any good?”  
Jake chuckled. “Kinda.” he said in a way that indicated that, yes, that poet was actually really, really good.  
Ben thought about it. He was fairly certain that there was some kind of philosophic discourse involved in that letter, a deeper context that neither he nor Jake fully comprehended. But he could see how such a standing could appeal to a young man even as it drove him into a crisis of identity.  
“Well,” he said slowly. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe you should write because you’re compelled to do it. But maybe then you should look at it from another angle.” he suggested, “If you can’t answer the question Must I write? maybe you can answer the question Can I stop?”

**Author's Note:**

> The opening quote and the one Ben reads out loud come from the first letter written by Rainer Maria Rilke to Franz Xaver Kappus in 1903; published 1929 by Rilke’s widow as the first of ten ‘Letters to a Young Poet’. The translation is my own. I hope it holds up.  
> As Ben suspects, the quote needs to be understood within the context of Rilke’s own philosophic and aesthetic ideas about literature and writing, rather than literally. Still, if you come across this as a teenager who dreams of being a writer it can pose some daunting questions.  
> The quote about writing v typing is by Truman Capote, who mocked Jack Kerouac’s claim he had written ‘On the Road’ more or less in three weeks, saying that that wasn’t writing as much as typing.


End file.
